John Major: The Autobiography - John Major

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I was leaving nothing to chance. The Liberal candidate was Major Dennis Rowe, a well-known local figure, and the Labour candidate a young man named Julian Fulbrook. Years later, in the Blair campaign of 1997, I saw Fulbrook trotted out to praise Labour as if he was a neutral who had fallen in love with the New Labour Party. The age of the spin doctor had arrived.

      A few hecklers followed me around. One, a Labour supporter, was a persistent nuisance, and one evening I responded pretty sharply to his comments. He rose from his seat, snorted disapproval and stalked out in high dudgeon. Unfortunately for him he was so intent on registering his disgust that he walked into the broom cupboard rather than out into the night air. The audience watched fascinated, then burst into laughter and applause as he emerged. Red-faced and embarrassed, he slunk out and did not reappear. I missed him – he had provided many a light-hearted moment during the campaign.

      Election day, 3 May 1979, dawned crisp and bright. It looked as though we were set to win nationally, although, curious to relate today, many wondered if Britain really would elect a woman as prime minister. But I was confident locally, and Andrew Thomson was super-confident. I drove around the huge constituency with Archie Gray, starting in the south and visiting polling stations and committee rooms. Norma and Andrew Thomson performed a similar odyssey, starting from the north. We planned to meet in the middle.

      As Archie and I reached the village of Brampton, I was astounded to see long queues of RAF personnel from the local air station patiently waiting to vote. Archie purred. ‘Look at that. They’re not going to put a Labour government back in office. You’re going to win, my boy.’ So saying, he produced a bottle of champagne.

      ‘A little early,’ he went on, ‘but we have something to celebrate.’

      We pulled into a layby and cheerily drank half the bottle. Thus fortified we pressed on.

      At each committee room the mood was buoyant. A high turnout, a Conservative lead and, in some areas, very little sign of opposition. It was a joyous day of pleasurable anticipation and growing excitement. As the polls closed I went to the club at ‘The Views’, the association headquarters, where Emily Blatch had some more news.

      ‘I’ve done a straw poll,’ she said, ‘outside a few polling stations. Based on that, you’ve romped home. I think you’ve won by twenty thousand!’

      Everyone chortled. Good news probably, was the consensus, but not that good.

      Because Huntingdonshire was such a large rural seat it did not count the vote until the next day, so Norma and I sat in front of the television as the national drama unfolded. It was soon apparent that there was a swing to the Conservatives. Many who were to become good friends were elected. Robert Atkins won Preston North, John Watson was in at Skipton, Chris Patten at Bath, Matthew Parris at West Derbyshire, Nick Lyell at Hemel Hempstead, Graham Bright at Luton – and then Brian Mawhinney won back Peterborough from Labour. From that moment I had no doubts. If marginal Peterborough was comfortably won, how could neighbouring Huntingdonshire be lost? At 5 a.m., with the certainty of a Conservative government and the happy anticipation of supporting it in the House of Commons, I went to bed.

      The count at St Ives was well under way when I arrived the following morning, and the result was soon clear. There was one glorious moment: as I looked at the line of tables holding counted votes for each party, the ‘Votes for Major’ tables stretched way ahead. A huge pile of freshly counted votes appeared, and I waited for them to be added to my opponents’ totals – but they weren’t. They were all Conservative votes, and more tables were levered into place to hold them. Emily Blatch had been right, and the result far exceeded our expectations. The candidates were bussed back to Huntingdon, where the result was traditionally announced by the High Sheriff from the balcony of the courthouse overlooking the packed market square. I had polled over forty thousand votes, and had a majority of 21,563. At last I was a Member of Parliament.

      Later that afternoon, after much celebrating in the Conservative Club, Norma and I went home in delight, to find our front doorstep festooned with cards, flowers, chocolates and champagne. I had found my political home.

       CHAPTER THREE Into the Commons

      WHEN I WALKED INTO the Commons as an MP for the first time on 9 May 1979 it was still the magical place I remembered from my first visit as a thirteen-year-old. I had promised myself then that I would go again when I could enter as a matter of right. Now, one hundred years after my father’s birth, I could, and I knew how my parents would have felt had they been with me as I arrived.

      I have never lost my awe for the institution of Parliament or the majesty of the building. It has history in every nook and cranny, and the shades of the past can easily be conjured up even though its purpose is to prepare the future. The place half glances over its shoulder at what has been. I believe the aura of the Commons, of itself, can influence policy, tugging at the imagination of Members. Would a glass-and-steel legislature have summoned the same emotions, for instance, over ‘sovereignty’?

      As I walked through the Members’ Entrance for the first day of the new Parliament the policeman on duty greeted me with a cheery ‘Good morning, Mr Major. Congratulations.’ Since I was but one of many anonymous new Members, I was astonished that he had done his homework so speedily. I soon learned that this was a matter of pride among the police, staff and attendants at the Commons.

      The new Conservative intake in 1979 was large in number and, we were assured flatteringly, one of the most talented for many elections. Many of its members would find their way to high office. Chris Patten, John Patten, William Waldegrave, David Mellor, Ian Lang, Robert Cranborne, Stephen Dorrell, Douglas Hogg and Brian Mawhinney would all reach the Cabinet. Nick Lyell, Tristan Garel-Jones, Robert Atkins, Richard Needham and many others served in senior posts. Graham Bright and John Ward both served as my Parliamentary Private Secretary during my time at Number 10. Others like Matthew Parris and John Watson had great talent but would leave the House for careers in journalism and business.

      The new Members soon formed their own alliances. Within weeks, like-minded Conservative colleagues set up dining clubs. The Blue Chips included those new MPs with most experience of the inner ring of government, often gained through working at Central Office or as a front-bench aide – Waldegrave, Patten and Patten, Cranborne and Garel-Jones foremost among them. It was the praetorian guard of the 1979 intake, with a healthy hint of one-nation scepticism about the instincts of Britain’s new Prime Minister. Most of us, of course, hardly knew Margaret Thatcher. I had met her for the first time at the Berwick and East Lothian by-election in 1978, when I visited the constituency to help the Conservative candidate Margaret Marshall, an old friend from Lambeth days. We thought we would win the seat, but Mrs Thatcher arrived for a day, sniffed the political air, and privately doubted we would make it. She was spot on. It seemed that our new prime minister had an acute political nose.

      I was to join the Blue Chips after the 1983 election, but at first I gravitated to the Guy Fawkes Club. Perhaps more workaday than the Blue Chips, it had its share of future stars, among them Stephen Dorrell, David Mellor, Graham Bright and Brian Mawhinney. We had asked each other what we hoped to achieve in Parliament, and I had answered without hesitation: ‘Chancellor.’ ‘PPS to the prime minister,’ said another member, Graham Bright, just as wet behind the ears as I was. In October 1990 Graham, the loyal and down-to-earth MP for Luton South, became my PPS at the Treasury, and he moved with me to Number 10 when I became prime minister a few weeks later.

      A number of my new colleagues had built reputations for themselves before entering the Commons, and were widely expected to gain early promotion. Others chose the tortoise’s strategy, and set out painstakingly to learn the way Parliament worked. The Chamber of the Commons is the display cabinet for talent for the world at large, but committees and backbench groups are where worth is often recognised by the cognoscenti within Parliament, and especially by the all-seeing Whips’ Office, who hold Members’ fates in their hand as surely as any prime minister.

      Some colleagues found their feet in Parliament before others had found the washroom. I had been in the House

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